Dissertation Grant: Social Science's Use of Controlled Field Experiments

该项目将研究如何采用随机对照田间实验成为证据和政策的“黄金标准”。它将讨论它们如何改变捐助者、发展经济学家、地方政府部门和有意成为研究人员的参与者之间的权力关系。 本项目将研究如何利用实地试验来评估国际经济发展干预措施。项目？的研究结果将有助于决策者了解他们资助的评估技术的种类，以及这些技术如何衡量国际经济发展政策的结果。该项目将通过研究实验室和实地科学之间的中间地带，扩大现有的科学知识的实践和政治奖学金，其中随机控制的实地实验影响评估，为外国援助中的“有效措施”提供证据。通过档案，访谈和人种学研究，该项目追溯了受控实地实验的历史，以分析社会科学家和发展实践者何时以及为什么使用它们，他们如何构建可行的实验空间和主题，以及对外国援助及其预期受益者的影响。这项研究将考虑外国技术援助如何对科学知识起作用;以及为继续使用这些知识创造信誉的政治和后勤斗争。该项目将有助于提高公众的科学素养和参与社会科学，学术界和决策者之间的理解，并改善对研究生的培训。

The project will examine how the adoption of randomized controlled field experiments became the "gold standard" of evidence and policy. It will address how they came to shift power relations among the donors, development economists, local ministries, and intended beneficiaries-turned-research participants. This project will study how field experiments came to be used to assess international economic development interventions. The project?s findings will help policy-makers to understand the kinds of technologies of evaluation that they fund and how these measure the outcomes of international economic development policy. This project will extend existing scholarship on the practices and politics of scientific knowledge by studying the middle ground between the laboratory and field sciences where randomized controlled field experiments impact evaluation to produce evidence for "what works" in foreign aid. Through archival, interview-based and ethnographic research, this project traces the history of the controlled field experiments to analyze when and why social scientists and development practitioners use them, how they construct viable experimental spaces and subjects, and the implications for foreign aid and its intended beneficiaries. This research will consider how foreign technical assistance acts on scientific knowledge; and the political and logistical struggle of creating credibility for their continued use. The project will contribute to increased public scientific literacy and engagement with social science, understanding between academia and policy makers, and improved training of graduate students.